A few years ago we took a trip to Lake Tahoe in California and visited the Royal Gorge Resort, the largest cross country skiing resort in North America. Z grew up on skis and had been cross country skiing several times before but this was the first time I had EVER been on skis….

It was great exercise and the scenery was amazing. Even though I spent most of the day on the ground and every muscle ached the following day, we had a lot of fun and wanted to go cross country skiing again.

We were excited to find that the Seattle area has several downhill skiing resorts and many cross country paths. We recently bought our own cross country skis and had been looking forward to breaking them in!

Yesterday it was rainy and dreary at our house so we decided to drive to the mountains to the cross country trails. We reached the mountains in just over an hour and found several feet of snow. (A bonus of living in Seattle – you’re close enough to enjoy the snow but don’t have to live with it daily!).

The cross country paths are groomed with a machine that makes little “lanes” in the snow. This is ideal for beginners like me, as the lanes keep your legs from going in opposite directions. This works most of the time, but there are still times when my legs just won’t cooperate!!

Yesterday I practiced stopping on hills… Zvonimir said my “swan dive” face plant would have been a great video clip to add to our site. I’m kind of happy he didn’t catch that on camera!! I did pretty well considering yesterday was only my second time on skis. I managed to keep my falls to less than double digits and only ended up with one large bruise! Hopefully at some point I’ll learn to stop without throwing myself on the ground…

View our Cross Country Skiing photos.

Posted in Activities, Cross country skiing, Outdoor activities 93 Comments »

I organized the Seattle Jingle Bell team for Booz Allen. The Jingle Bell run is a really fun charity 5k running race. With over 10,000 participants, Seattle is the largest Jingle Bell run in the country. We had a team of about 15 people do the race. Each participant is given bells to attach to their shoes and people sing holiday songs along the race. It’s always a fun race and raises money for the Arthritis foundation.

View our Jingle Bell Run photos.

Posted in Jingle Bell Run 1 Comment »

After months off from training because of our vacation, Zvonimir was ready to start training for something. He found the Black Diamond Triathlon near Seattle. Though it was August, the weather was extremely cold and the swim looked miserable! Even though it was 40 degrees out there were still people swimming only in a speedo…. meanwhile, I had my winter jacket on!!

View Zvonimir’s Black Diamond triathlon photos.

Posted in Triathlon 298 Comments »

Zvonimir graduated from Wharton in May. While we were really sad to leave all of the great friends we met in Philadelphia we were excited to start the next chapter of our life. Zvonimir’s parents and sister and brother-in-law came to the US for graduation.

We had a busy couple of weeks around graduation as we were packing and shipping our household goods, packing for our India, Slovenia and Croatia trips, I was wrapping up a project at work before my leave of absence and were were saying our good-byes to our friends.

View the Wharton graduation photos.

Posted in Wharton Graduation 108 Comments »

We knew we wanted to go to the southern hemisphere for our honeymoon which is opposite season. We planned our honeymoon less than 3 months before we were scheduled to leave (and before we planned the wedding!).

With the help of the wedding planner we used (highly recommended!) we planned a trip to New Zealand’s south island. The flight to NZ is very long but it is well worth it! It’s a beautiful country and somewhere we would love to visit again!

As usual, our vacation was filled with lots of activity! One great service our honeymoon planner offered was honeymoon activity registry. We registered for all of the cool activities we wanted to do on our honeymoon in lieu of traditional wedding gifts. We kayaked in Milford Sound, did wine tasting, took a jet boat ride, and did heli rafting to name a few.

View our New Zealand Honeymoon photos.

Posted in Activities, Our Wedding & Honemoon, Travel 82 Comments »